Friday, June 04, 2010

Asheville city government has launched an aggressive plan to communicate with residents in cyberspace. The problem: The city's trying to run before it knows how to walk.

The city on Thursday invited a group of about 30 people, including local reporters, bloggers, marketers and social media experts, to City Hall to hear details of its new social media strategy. It's a significant public relations push for local government, which is spending thousands of taxpayers' dollars to boost its online presence.

City spokeswoman Dawa Hitch says the goal is to increase “citizen engagement” by having government workers sending out and receiving information on social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. That's a fine target, but Hitch admitted that the city would concentrate first on getting information out and probably wouldn't be responding much online to residents.

If you're not going to be social on social media, why bother? The benefit of interacting with people online is the ability to provide valuable information quickly and the ability to show people that you're listening. If you don't do that, you won't gain many cyberspace pals.

I sent my own ideas to Dawa Hitch in an email to her. Here's what I had to say as a social media marketer and experienced social media campaign leader:

As for me, I'd love to see the city of Asheville cultivate citizenpartners -- people who are willing to gather info (news, photos, etc)and use that to engage social media users directly. I know there isn'ta huge budget in place for city social media (a shame -- it deservesFT attention), but the street team/guerilla way of doing things can bevery effective. An example of a way to engage citizen users might beto have a team of people livetweeting, webcasting and photographingcity events like Bele Chere, all using a hashtag. I think people wouldLOVE to do that.

I would also love to see more meetings like today's, but with anagenda and structure more clearly defined (I know today's goal was tostart things, and to listen). Maybe even have a networking event,where local social media people can meet city employees (and eachother), and learn what they really do.

I'd love to see some very specific social media GOALS for Asheville(use social media to educate people on accessing and understandingbudget data, have a regular schedule of budget data release, withpre-publicity; post and share minutes from city meetings; create acity Flickr account, maybe even with citizen access; create anactionable, assigned social media plan for info-sharing and responseduring emergencies/disasters) and it'd be lovely if they were createdin collaboration with citizen social media users.

I've wanted for MONTHS to have a disaster-response forum in which theAPD, Fire & Rescue, Charter, the city, Progress Energy, all gottogether and decided how to best leverage social media in times ofdisaster. Pre-create hashtags, have action plans in place for poweroutages, snowstorms, flooding, you name it...

What else do we bloggers of Asheville have to say to the city about how it's using its growing new social media presence?

Please comment!

6 comments:

I'm Liking this idea Jennifer. It sounds like a very empowering way for the public to maintain transparency and accountability in local government. What's more, it seems like a great way for residents to show the character that makes this city such a great place to live. I think this is what Jason was trying to get at in his C-T article. I'm sorry I didn't think of it first. Cheers!

Is this Facebook friend request I just received from "Asheville Nc" from the city? If so, the city definitely still has its training wheels on. Until they learn the difference between creating a Facebook profile and a fan page, I'm clicking "Ignore."

Love these ideas Jennifer.Can any of this be initiated BY the citizen social media users? I mean, would it make sense to put a small amount of time into organizing the basics (enough to paint the picture and share the vision) with the greater goal of approaching City decision makers on the idea?

Larger question: Does Government move too slow for Social Media?! We are in a NOW era... and government has NEVER operated in a NOW mode. Is it possible that government will never be able to keep up?

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